A popular president, closing out his second term, will soon leave office. The president-elect is a loud-mouthed demagogue, a Republican, who loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College. He has a problem observing boundaries.

You may find it hard to believe, but this is the plot of a new Dallas-based audio drama that began to take shape long before Donald J. Trump admitted he even wanted to be president.

So, yes, the timing is eerie but purely coincidental and maybe even outrageously lucky. The first of 13 episodes of Terms airs Sunday and wraps up in mid-January, on or around Inauguration Day.

Keith Reynolds, Lindsay Graham, Robert McCollum and Michael Federico, left to right, are the creative team behind the new fictional audio series Terms, photographed in Dallas on Wednesday, November 16, 2016. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News)

(Staff Photographer)

Lindsay Graham — and yes, that is his real name — had the idea ''kicking around" at least five years ago, say his colleagues, who are debuting Terms under the banner of a Dallas-based startup called Spoke Media, which specializes in audio storytelling. (Spoke has also consulted on The Dallas Morning News podcast, Strange.)

Graham says he began to think of the story as far back as 1992, before Bill Clinton became president.

"Everyone has been saying that a hallmark of American democracy is the peaceful transition of power," says Graham, 42, who grew up in Dallas and graduated from Highland Park High School. "But what if it wasn't — just one time? What would it take for one or two or three people to make a decision so that it's not a peaceful transition?"

And therein lies the story. It revolves around a sitting president, a mainstream Republican, adored by the nation he serves. He was elected to the White House in 2008 and succeeded President John Kerry, who for the purposes of Terms kept President George W. Bush from winning re-election.

From left, Brandon Potter and Jeffrey Schmidt perform in the new Dallas-based audio drama, 'Terms.' Potter plays the controversial president-elect, while Schmidt voices the part of the incumbent president. (Courtesy of Karen Almond)

Playing — or is it voicing? — the part of incumbent President Oliver Pierce is Jeffrey Schmidt, a director and actor whose work is well known at Theater Three and the Dallas Theater Center. And therein lies one of the coolest aspects of Terms.

Schmidt is only one example of how this fledgling audio enterprise is making clever use of Dallas' collectively gifted acting pool. Voicing President-Elect Charles Dunwalke is Brandon Potter, who played President Lyndon B. Johnson in the terrific production of All the Way at Dallas Theater Center.

Lydia Mackay, cast as Marley in the upcoming production of A Christmas Carol at Dallas Theater Center, voices the part of First Lady Gwen Pierce. That should work well since Schmidt and Mackay are, in real life, a married couple.

Keith Reynolds, 32, who with Graham co-founded Spoke Media, recently moved to Dallas from New Jersey. He grew up in Winslow, ME., where in his younger years he loved falling asleep to the TV drama, The West Wing. The hit series actually gave him the idea, he says, of using politics as the vehicle for a sound-only drama.

Reynolds says audio dramas have nowhere to go but up, given the rise of Bluetooth technology in cars. The format has grown 40 percent a year since 2011, and, he says, 21 percent of Americans now listen to podcasts, "the same percentage that uses Twitter."

Federico agreed to join the Terms team after hearing McCollum and Graham pitch it as "an old-school, Orson Welles-like audio drama. That's what really got me excited about it."

Orson Welles delivering his famous radio broadcast of 'The War of The Worlds' in 1930 (The Dallas Morning News Archives)

As for the story, Graham wanted the outgoing president and the president-elect to be from the same party, thinking the plot would work better that way. Toward the end of the season, he says, listeners will "hear the beating heart of why Pierce is taking these extraordinary measures."

Pierce believes that "government is there for a purpose, and that purpose is to help the people."

Pierce is a man "who has served his entire life, and well, for his country. He believes deeply in the institutions he's worked in. And yet, he comes across a situation in which they have stopped working — and he has to make a choice: Do I respect the mechanics of government, a peaceful transition of power, or do I respect the intent of government, which is serving the people?"

"And am I willing to risk one to save the other?" interjects McCollum. "This is a man who, absolutely and truly, is completely dedicated to the Constitution and our system of government and is willing to put it at risk to preserve it."

When he heard that as the pitch to join the team for Terms, McCollum said he was able to answer only one way: "All right — I'm in!"